5 Tips for a Healthier Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but it’s not necessarily the best for our health with its combination of sugary treats and cheap plastic costumes. This year, I’m trying to make my holiday fun a little healthier for my family and the environment. Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with. Please share your tips with me!

1. Host a costume-swap party. I love this idea of saving and passing on used Halloween costumes, especially for kids. If you have a group of parent friends, especially whose children are a few years apart in ages, make it an annual tradition to save your children’s costumes and swap them next year. The site National Costume Swap Day offers registration and tips for hosting a swap. A friend of mine used to host an annual "soup swap" party. Everyone would make a large batch of soup, then package it in 1-quart plastic freezer bags. Everyone would bring four to six servings and trade. We all left with many kinds of soup for the freezer. You could host such a party and add a costume swap into the mix.

2. Get thee to the thrift store. I love thrift store shopping, but depending where you live it can require some hunting to find nice, normal day-to-day clothing. Lucky for us we aren’t looking for nice or normal when it comes to Halloween. Take a few hours on an upcoming Saturday to visit your local thrift store and see what inspirational (aka weird) clothing options you can find.

3. Make your own face paint. When the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested children’s face paint for lead and other heavy chemicals, they found lead present in 10 of 10 samples. Fortunately, it’s fun and easy to make your own nontoxic version by mixing natural food coloring (available at health food stores or here) into unscented lotion or pure cocoa butter. Greenhalloween.org offers video instructions.

5. Make a healthier treat. While candy doesn’t offer much in terms of nutritional value, a few Halloween favorites are better from a health perspective. Caramel apples, for example, offer all of the fibery goodness of the fruit and, if you add them, nuts provide healthy fats. This recipe from Whole Lifestyle Nutrition uses cream, sucanat (unrefined cane sugar) and honey to make caramel. Another tasty treat that’s pretty good for us: Caramel corn. This healthier version uses almond or peanut butter and honey to make a sweet topping for popped corn (always avoid microwave popcorn bags, which are lined with the chemical PFOA—instead opt for air-popped, skillet-popped or simply use a brown paper bag in the microwave).

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